To further support the ability of healthcare providers to educate patients and their families about asthma in El Salvador, Dr. Befus and his team developed a set of Spanish-language teaching tools, including flipcharts and an action plan.

Project: Building continuity of support for allergic children with asthma and/or anaphylaxis and their families

Principal investigator: Miriam Stewart

The web-based support tools and education programs designed by Dr. Stewart’s team not only meet the needs of children and teens living with severe allergies and asthma regardless of where they live in Canada, but also the needs of their parents.

“Animations can make science exciting,” notes Dr. Tebbutt. “They also have high impact and help people better remember what is being taught.” Dr. Levinson reports that people from all over the world have been accessing and incorporating their animations into local education programs.

Dr. Elliott’s long-range vision, which she shares with many colleagues and other food allergy stakeholders, requires the government’s full support. Their big aspiration: a national food allergy strategy for Canada.

Project: Development of national strategies for implementing and evaluating evidence-based indicators for benchmarking and monitoring asthma care in Canada

Principal investigator: Dr. Teresa To

To address the issues of inconsistent and suboptimal asthma care across the country, Dr. To focused on bridging the gap between the established guidelines and the real-life practice of asthma management in the offices of primary care physicians.

Health Canada and other partner organizations will provide a conduit to policy makers to share findings and promote effective strategies for the prevention and management of food allergies and anaphylaxis.

“Policy makers are very interested in questions around pharmaceutical costs and access,” Dr. Ungar said. “We are making sure that decision makers at local, provincial and national levels are getting this information, not just academics.”

Raising physician and policy maker awareness regarding work-related asthma and the steps that can be taken to mitigate health effects can promote proper treatment that will reduce lost productivity and wages and reduce the chance of asthma re-occurrence or a severe attack.

The next step will be to explore the connection between early-life stress and adult health with policy makers in health care and industry. The team’s discovery can potentially lead to reduced demands on the healthcare system through the implementation of social and economic policy frameworks that address the needs of low socio-economic status families with children.

Project: Surveying Canadians to Assess the Prevalence of Common Food Allergies and Attitudes towards Food Labelling and Risk (SCAAALAR)

Principal investigators: Ann Clarke and Susan Elliott

Drs. Clarke and Elliott aim to ensure that this study improves the everyday lives of Canadians, and already it has had a direct impact on public policy, including mandatory changes on food labels for allergen ingredient declaration.

Interest in this study extends beyond parents, respiratory health experts and scientists, to government policy makers. Manitoba, which already has an impressive province-wide screening program for post-partum depression, has approached Dr. Kozyrskyj to help it ensure that its public health nurses ask new mothers all the right questions.

Through the project team’s publications and its knowledge mobilization and community engagement efforts, these findings are contributing to more efficient and effective policymaking and to ethical and legal innovations in the management and governance of health research.

Project: Building continuity of support for allergic children with asthma and/or anaphylaxis and their families

Principal investigator: Lisa Cicutto

This study has important implications for policy development, implementation and adherence. The gaps identified revealed that school personnel and parents are likely unaware of their own school boards’ written anaphylaxis policy. This discovery can guide school board officials in preparing training, communication and policy.